In Palermo, It Rains Mice
August 31, 2000 6:50 pm EST

PALERMO, Sicily (Reuters) - In some places it rains cats and dogs. In Palermo, it rains mice.

Residents of the Sicilian capital say mice, which leap from rooftop to rooftop in the run-down city center, have grown too fat to jump and are plummeting into the streets, often hitting passers-by below.

Pictures of the area, where a United Nations conference on crime is due to start soon, showed horrified citizens looking in disbelief at streets littered with dead rodents.

Angry residents erected barricades on Wednesday night to protest against city officials' failure to tackle the problem, disrupting traffic for several hours, the news agency ANSA reported. The barricades were later taken down.